An Unfair Advantage
by TypewriterTardis
Summary: You remember that bloody handkerchief covered in Will's blood that Tessa stuck in her sleeve? Yeah, that one. It's about to come in handy when Tessa decides to finally figure out what makes Will act so coldly.
1. Chapter 1: Walls of Stone

**Author's Note: This was maybe going to be a continuing thing, but when I wrote it, it was midnight and I was only halfway through Clockwork Prince, so... Maybe a one-shot, maybe longer. We shall see. This is my version of what happened after the ifrit den. Therefore, there is no Tessa and Jem kiss. So if you're looking for Tessa/Jem romance, then you'd better head off somewhere else, cuz it ain't here :)**

When Tessa returned to her room, she felt strangely empty, as though her heart had been surgically removed from her chest. She should have followed Jem, she knew. He had stormed off to his room, he had been angry, far angrier than she had ever seen him by a lot. If Jem was angry, he was also hurt. If he was hurt, she should go to him, comfort him, console him, and most certainly persuade him to forgive Will and to know that Will hadn't meant it as an insult. Had he?

No, of _course_ not. Not even Will could be so cruel. Could he?

Tessa cursed herself. How could she even think such thoughts? Will? Never. Not even cold, unfeeling Will could do something so savage, so vicious as to mock the very thing that was killing his friend and blood brother.

But still, she had to wonder, why did he do the things he did? Why did he push everyone away? Why did he pretend to carouse at night and really wander the London streets alone? Why did he act so charming at times and so surly at others? And most of all, why did he kiss her and then push her away? And what did he mean "I can't?"

As those questions became too much for her, her mind bursting, she felt something in her sleeve. It was the handkerchief, still wet with Will's blood. Tessa gulped. That wasn't fair... She had an unfair advantage. Asking Will was one thing, but becoming him, Changing into him, to search through his mind was another. He couldn't even defend himself, but then... He couldn't lie either.

And Tessa had the feeling that Will _would_ lie if asked. If he said anything at all.

Tessa pulled the handkerchief from her pocket. She felt a twinge of guilt and she wondered what Jem would say if she told him what she was thinking about doing, Jem who never asked, but tirelessly continued loving Will even as Will burned every bridge he made behind him.

But Tessa had to know. She somehow felt that Will needed something. Behind his eyes that day after Mortmain left, when Will thought she was dead, his eyes had betrayed him. He had let more through than he had wanted, and she had thought there might be a pain more than that of losing her. There had been an emptiness and a hole, akin to that which she had felt when she became Camille Belcourt for the first time: that of having one's heart ripped out of one's chest.

Tessa gritted her teeth and closed her eyes. Then she began to concentrate. She felt the sense of Cyril on the handkerchief, where he had left traces. After all, he had owned it before he had donated it to the purposes of Tessa, cleaning blood from Will's face where Jem had punched him.

Jem.

There was a trace of him there too... Perhaps the term "blood brothers" was a little more literal than she had thought. There were ceremonies, after all, magics and runes binding them to eachother.

Tessa pushed past Cyril and Jem, impatient to reach the dark hair, midnight blue eyes and angelic features she knew she would find. She knew there would be barriers, walls to keep people from seeing him for who he really was, but whatever she had expected, it had not been this.

In front of her, there was stone wall, grey stone towering through Will's mind like the walls of a castle, and keeping her from reaching him.

_Oh, Will,_ thought Tessa, scanning the wall for an opening, _What do you have behind there that is so secret and horrible that you will let no one in?_

But further on down the wall, there was a crack, there were crumbling stones, as though a cannon had blasted into Will's mental walls and they were slowing coming down.

Tessa scrambled into Will's memories curiously, her mind swimming with a million questions. She began to open her eyes, when it hit, her, the first memories.

And then Tessa saw herself.

She was everywhere, her name floated on the breezes of Will's mind. She stood in the middle of the training room floor, Gabriel's arms around her, and she felt a knife stab into her heart with jealousy. She felt a pain in her hand and saw herself cornered in her dirty small bedroom in the dark sister's house after she had hit him with a jug. She saw Camille Belcourt screaming as Nate slumped tied to a chair. She saw herself rolling as an Automaton swooped downward in the woods in York and felt numbness and horror. She saw herself in a pool of blood next to the fountain in the Sanctuary and wondered if her heart were breaking. Then something she couldn't place, not her, no, but another girl, with Will's dark hair lying on a bed, bloated, swelled, and horrid. The image left her gasping, but Will's memories flew by and she felt herself kissing Will's lips in the attic, felt the soaring sensation, felt the tingling all over her body, then-

Tessa gasped.

A library, a box, the box open, the images flashed by like lightening striking. Then a demon, huge and blue with red, red eyes and a long tail. She screamed. A girl with a seraph blade in front of her. The girl who was dead.

"_I banish you."_

The demon laughed.

"No," gasped Tessa, hearing Will's deep voice coming from her lips and hearing it crack.

The girl on the ground. The demon looking at her. Tessa opened her mouth to scream, but found she could not, only sink to her knees and let the memory take her.

"_It is you father I would destroy, but as he is not here, you will have to do. I curse you. All who love you will die. Their love for you will be their destruction. It may take moments, it may take years, but any who look upon you with love will die of it, unless you remove yourself from them forever. And I shall begin with _her_."_

Tessa heard Will's screaming, heard his mingled with a woman's crying as she bent over the body of the girl, Will's sister, Tessa realized. Ella, Will's mind told her_._ _My sister is dead._ Will screams continued, mixing and becoming another girl's screams. _Cecily_? Tessa wondered, until no, she opened her eyes and realized that she was screaming.

She lay on the floor, curled into a ball, clutching her head in her hands and shaking. She heard a hard knocking on the door, then the rattling of the handle. Thank God she had bolted it.

"Tessa? Tessa? Are you alright?" It was Jem.

"Miss Tessa?" Sophie. "Do you need help?"

"Tessa?" Jem's urgent voice cut through to her very bone. "What is it?"

"Nothing," she gasped, struggling for breath. "Nothing," she said louder. "Just a nightmare, that's all. I'll be fine. No need to worry."

Jem seemed unwilling to go. But Tessa would not allow him to stay. She could not see Jem now.

"Just go. Get some rest. I will be fine."

She stifled her tears, still on the floor until she heard Jem's door shut across the hall. Then she let the tears come, pouring down her cheeks and into her hair which spread out across the floor. She sobbed silently for Ella, for Will's mother, and for Will.

Will.

_Will._

Will, who had been cursed to never be loved, who had lived his life as unkindly as possible to keep others safe. In between those spurts of memories, Tessa had been the twelve-year-old Will making his way along the road from the Welsh countryside to the crowded, stifling streets of London. She had seen Charlotte's annoyed face when he had been rude to her and remembered crying about it later. She been him making fun of Sophie and moping about the training room afterwards. She had seen his midnight treks across London and felt his silent tears along the Thames. She had seen the underside of his bed, crying as she heard his parents voices calling his name and felt his pain at leaving them there to mourn his loss as well as his sister's.

And she had felt more than seen the way it felt for Will to shun her, pretend she didn't exist, didn't mean anything to her. And it felt as if someone had wrapped iron chains around her heart and was squeezing them tighter, crushing her heart smaller and smaller until she felt it could only disappear.

Tessa rolled onto her back. She looked at the ceiling.

With a sigh of resignation and pity, she allowed herself to picture Will's face as he had held her in the Sanctuary that night, so long ago it seemed...

That was what she had seen, that fear and raw pain that she had felt. What had the poor boy not felt in the last five years since he arrived at the institute?

Tessa sat up and the blood rushed to her head. How long had she lain there? An hour? Two?

Even one hour was too long. Tessa rose and went to the door.

And she set off into the corridors to find Will.


	2. Chapter 2: Under the Influence

**Author's Note: Sorry. It took way longer to update than I had hoped. Oh for my noble intents- this weekend turned into a massive studying frenzy, so I got way less important stuff done than I had hoped. And yes, by important stuff, I mean fanfictions. **

**Voila the second chapter. Sorry if it's a let down, but frankly I couldn't figure out what to say. Then I remembered, Will went on a drug spree! He's still under the influence! Hence the title, by the way. Enjoy!**

Tessa cracked open her bedroom door and peered out. Jem's door was open across the hall, and she could see the light spilling out from it onto the rug. She slid out into the hall. Quietly closing the door, she crept along the wall past Jem's room.

He had his back to the door, holding his violin to his shoulder but not playing. Tessa tried not to look at him. She knew she should talk to him, but she persuaded herself in the split second as she passed his door, that Will needed her more.

Walking the Institute corridors, Tessa tried to steer her mind clear of Will, his tragic history and his memories. But little snippets kept coming back to her... The demon... His sister's dead body... The sickening pain he had felt when he gazed at her... The piercing loneliness that came from shunning those he loved best... And the very thing she did _not_ want to remember, the look on her own face on the rooftop and the stunned empty feeling he had felt when she had left the roof and he was alone.

Tessa found herself dwelling on that memory as she wandered the halls, found herself reliving it again and again, picturing her own face and feeling the strange relief. He had thought that would persuade her. He had thought she would hate him. Tessa remembered wanting to hate him, if only to protect herself from a broken heart. But it was always too hard. Somehow, no matter how foully he acted towards her, no matter how awful he had been or what insult he had thrown her way, she could never find it in herself to hate him. And now she knew why he had done it, and she forgave him for it. If possible, she loved him even more for it.

And for all his fear and pain and broken-ness, Will was stronger than any of them had given him credit for, for not giving up and for doing it at all.

Though she had only been to Will's room the one time, earlier that day, Tessa re-traced her steps, down the winding corridors, blindly following the hallway till she reached the tower. The door before her stood ajar. A faint light crept around the door. Tessa peered through the crack and saw Will, laying sprawled across his bed.

He tossed and turned feverishly, murmuring things too soft to hear.

And then, "Tessa."

She blinked, almost wondering if he had seen her at the door. But no, his eyes were still half closed, and he still trashed across the bed as though trying to escape a snake's hold.

He was dreaming about her.

Almost involuntarily, Tessa stepped forward into the room. "Will," she whispered. In his drug induced stupor, Will did not or could not hear her.

"Oh, Will," Tessa sighed. She stood at the side of Will's bed and watched him for a moment. Other than the red of his cheeks, his face looked paler even than it had lately, the skin under his eyes almost the same blue-violet as his eyes. His forehead was shiny with sweat. His cheeks were flushed and fiery red.

Tessa sunk onto the bed beside him and stroked his cheek with her cool fingers. Will moaned something about an angel and pressed her hand to his face with a shaking and hot hand.

With her other hand, she reached to feel his forehead to check his temperature. Only then did she realize that in her left hand, she still held Cyril's handkerchief, now stiff with Will's congealed blood. Tessa cringed, remembering why she was there. The handkerchief was flung onto the dresser next to the bed. It landed next to a pile of books. On top was A Tale of Two Cities.

For the second time that night, Tessa wanted to curl up and die.

She withdrew her hand from his grasp and set to pushing him all the way onto the bed. It was hard work, for a thin girl. And Will was no twig. But finally, Tessa had rotated Will's body so his head was on the pillow.

On the floor, she discovered a bowl of water. There was a damp cloth on the floor, flung roughly aside. Cyril must have brought it. And Will must have discarded the cloth in his feverish state. Tessa wetted the cloth and mopped awkwardly at Will's face.

He stirred and groaned.

"Will, shhh," Tessa whispered to him. "It's me, Tessa."

"Tess," he breathed.

Tessa found herself moved by a strange, unrecognizable force. She leaned in and kissed him. He gasped in surprise, but Tessa did not draw back. She entwined her fingers in his black hair and let him reach for hers. He pulled the pins from her hair as he had before, and let it fall over her shoulders. His hands grasped at her curls and tangled in them.

When Tessa had to breath, she pulled back. Will's glazed eyes stared up at her, squinting as though he was trying very hard to understand something. "Tess?" he asked, unsure.

"Will," she answered.

He stared at her uncomprehendingly. "Am I dreaming? I must be dreaming." Distractedly, he reached for her hand. "But what a dream, better by far... than what I've dreampt before..." He laced his fingers with hers. "Stay with me, let me never wake..." He exhaled slowly.

"This isn't a dream," said Tessa slowly. "If it is, then I wish never to wake as well." She leaned in again and Will pulled her closer. When they kissed again, there was an unreal feeling to it. Tessa wondered if it was really a dream, and she had imagined it all, the Change, Will's memories... What if she were really in her bed in her room, Jem across the hall, not playing his violin.

Jem.

Tessa banished him from her mind.

She pulled back from Will and looked into his starry blue eyes. "Will, I- I have something to tell you- I'm sorry, but I-"

"I love you." Will spoke quietly but firmly. His voice was low and full of emotion.

Tessa gulped. She couldn't say it now, not when he was like this. It would have to wait... But could she survive the night with the knowledge of the curse weighing on her?

"Stay with me."

Those three words were Tessa's savior.

"Yes," she whispered. "Always."

She curled up next to Will, her head resting on the place where his shoulder met his chest. She felt his breathing slowing as he fell into sleep. Tessa closed her eyes. It had been a long, long day. She closed her eyes, half-fearing more images from Will's mind, but they didn't come. Instead, she felt only the calm and relief of sleep as it crept up on her mind.

As Tessa drifted into slumber, she vaguely thought she felt Will's hand on her face, but she couldn't be sure...

**Yeah, I borrowed from the Hunger Games... "Stay with me"-"Always", but it fit. **

**And I sort of cheated by not actually having Tessa confront Will, but it's logical, right? He's under the influence of demon drugs and I would imagine they last a while.**

**I would love a review or two! I do enjoy them so... And I'll try to update sooner next time. Heh.**


	3. Chapter 3: Confrontation

**A/N: Sorry, you all, it took way longer than I hoped... Here goes...**

Tessa felt the softness of the sheets under her cheek and sighed, rolling over. A loud thump sounded from off to her left, and a very masculine cry followed. Tessa sat up and peered over the edge of the bed. "Will?"

Will stared up at her, wide eyed. "Tessa? What are you doing here?" He looked around the room quickly and, seeming to realize where he was, snapped his head back to look at her. "Were you here all night? Tessa, you know I don't- you shouldn't- I-"

"Will," Tessa interrupted, but he continued.

"What happened last night, Tessa? Why are you here?"

"A-After we got back from the Ifrit Den, Will, I- I shouldn't have. It was wrong, and I know it, but I had to know-"

"What?" Will's voice was dangerous. "Tessa, what did you do?"

She lowered her eyes, unable to look at him. If this was how angry he was without even knowing what she had done... What would he do when she told him? "I Changed, Will. Into you." He said nothing, so she looked up at him. He just stared at her, not seeming to understand. "I Changed into you, Will," she repeated, "I saw your memories." When he still didn't respond, she took a deep breath and steeled herself.

"I know about Ella. And the Curse."

Will flinched. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall. "How?"

"Pardon?"

"How? How did you Change into me?"

Tessa leaned across the bed to the nightstand. Gingerly, she plucked the handkerchief, the blood now dried and turned almost brown, and showed it to Will. He looked at it skeptically, then looked at her with his head tilted. "It was Cyril's, but he must not have used it much before he let you use it to mop up the blood."

"Blood?" Will sounded almost interested.

"Yes, from where Jem hit you."

Will blinked. "Jem hit me? _Jem_hit me? Are you completely sure?" He shook his head, even as Tessa nodded. "He did, Will. He was angry, you seemed to be mocking his... condition."

Will snorted. "Mocking it, indeed. He's not the only one with troubles." He realized that he had brought them back to the topic of his Curse, and flinched, his face paling visibly. He gulped. "Tessa, you shouldn't have done that."

They both knew what he was talking about.

"Why didn't you tell anyone? All those years, trying to make people hate you... How did you do it without breaking? How did you survive? I saw all the times you looked into the Thames and wanted to jump in, all the times you considered jumping off the Institute roof... Will, didn't you know you could never really make us hate you?" Tessa slid down off the bed and onto the floor beside him.

He sighed, a broken sigh, full of desire and pain and wishful dreams. She remembered the emotions she had felt when she broke into his mind and past the walls he had built to try to keep others out. "So last night wasn't a dream, then?"

Tessa started. "You remember that?"

"If by 'that', you mean you kissing me, then yes, I do remember that. I thought it might have been a dream. A pleasant one, at that."

"The other you would have made a mean comment about that." Tessa wasn't sure why she said it, but it was true. The other Will would have said something mean about her kissing abilities, or possibly insulted her honor. Not, of course, that he didn't have completely noble intentions when he did that, it had only been to protect her after all.

In a last-ditch attempt to regain the last fragments of his carefully built-up shield, Will made a particularly Will-ish remark. "What makes you think I'm not still the 'other Will'?" He tried to glare, but it was too much effort.

"Will," Tessa said, gently, reaching out to stroke his cheek. He shied away like a wounded animal. "Will, I've seen your mind, I've seen you memories and felt your feelings. I know the real you, the old you is still in there, waiting until it's allowed to come out."

"It never will be. The old Will is gone, and he'll never come back, Tessa. He can't." Will shook his head.

Tessa scooted closer to him and reached a hand out to caress his cheek gently. This time she didn't pull her hand away when he tried to move away. "Will, being this angry, hostile version of yourself doesn't stop us from loving you. It may have stopped Jessamine, but the rest of us can still see through you, you know. We know there's more to you than meets the eye. Even the others can, and I haven't even told them what I know. And I won't, I promise, not if you don't want me to," she said, answering his worried look.

There was a pause. Then, "Thank you, Tessa."

Tessa stared at Will, noticing the vaguely unhealthy look of the flush in his cheeks and the way his usually so blue eyes looked almost gray in the dim light shining through the window of his room. When he raised his eyes to meet hers, she searched them to find a sign of the Will she'd seen in Will's mind. What she saw was not the laughing boy in his early memories, but the lost boy she'd seen at age twelve, walking the long road from Wales to England and hiding in his room crying at the sound of his mother and father calling his name.

"Why don't you call me Tess any more, Will?" Tessa asked. There had been something strange about the way he had been talking to her, and now she realized, he hadn't been calling her by his special nickname for her. No one called her Tess, except Will, and, on occasion, Jem. But it was never the same. It didn't hold the same thrill, the same excitement, the same meaning. When Will called her Tess, she thought of the kiss in the attic. She thought of the kiss on the roof. She thought of the first time she had seen him and how she had thought he was the most beautiful boy she had ever seen.

He still was the most beautiful boy she had ever seen, but sitting there in front of her on the floor of his room with a confused expression on his face, he wasn't just beautiful. He was tragic.

"I- I don't know." Will paused and took a breath. "Tessa- Tess," his voice broke, "I can't, you know that. I can't let myself love you, because when I do, I can't push you away."

"But I don't want you to push me away!" Tessa cried. "Will, I love you. When you push me away, it breaks my heart, but it doesn't make me stop loving you. I'll never stop loving you, Will. No matter how many time you try to make me."

"Tess, I have to protect you. If you love me, you'll die, just like- just like Ella." Tears began to roll down Will's face. He brushed at them angrily. It had been so long since he had cried in front of anyone.

Tessa leaned forward. "Will," she whispered. "I haven't died yet. And if I do, I want to have loved you first." Gently, with her thumb, she wiped a tear from Will's cheek and took his hand in hers. "Please. Let me."

Will looked away, but Tessa turned his face back to her. When she kissed him, he tried to pull away, but was stopped by the wall at his back. She brought her other hand up to his chest and leaned against him. One hand tangled in his hair, playing with the curls, the other ran down his neck to his shoulder. Will, almost without meaning to, but only almost, brought a hand to the back of her neck. He lifted his other to her back, and pressed her against him. Tessa felt him relaxing against her, and thought how ironic it was that, when they had kissed so passionately before, she had been the one to relax into him, the one to be reluctant at first. She remembered how he had pushed her from him both times and how hollow she had felt after feeling so complete... But now she knew why. All the hollowness and pain had been filled instead with pity and love for Will.

When they broke apart, it was only because a sharp knock on the door alerted them to the existence of the world around them.

"Master Will?" It was Sophie. "Master Will? It's breakfast time! Mrs. Branwell says if you don't get up now, you won't get any food."

Will looked into Tessa's wide eyes as he said, "Alright, Sophie. I'll get up."

"And Miss Tessa, if you want me to help you dress, I can wait in your room until you're ready."

Tessa and Will gasped in unison. "Bu-But," spluttered Tessa, "How in the world did you know I was in here, Sophie?"

They heard Sophie chuckle. "You weren't in your room, and this was the most logical place for you you to be, Miss Tessa." She paused. "Don't worry, I won't tell anyone"

Tessa felt relief surge through her. She wasn't sure that the Institute was quite _that_ much different than the outside world in respects to scandal. "Thank you, Sophie. I will be there in just a few minutes."

"No need to rush." The amusement in Sophie's voice was barely masked by politeness. Her footsteps retreated down the corridor.

Will pulled Tessa to him and kissed her hard on the lips, crushing her body against his. Tessa gasped in surprise, but folded herself into his arms happily. Eventually she had to break away. "We should go to breakfast," she said reluctantly. Her skirt was crushed from sleeping in it and sitting on the floor in it, and she tried futilely to smooth out the wrinkles when she stood. Will remained on the floor. He looked up at her though his thick dark eyelashes, then grinned widely. This was the boy she had first met, but was it the Will of old, Tessa wondered, smiling back down at him.

"I don't want to let you out of my sight," Will said, "Even for just a moment."

"I'm afraid that, if we want to avoid too much suspicion, you must," Tessa said wryly. "I'll see you at breakfast. Do change your shirt. It's wrinkled and it has blood on it."

Will looked down at it with interest and said, "Do you think it makes me look handsomely disheveled? Does that look suit me?" His eyes twinkled, something she had rarely seen them do.

Tessa felt a strange exhilaration overcome her. "Most things make you look handsomely disheveled and almost any look suits you," she told him. Taking a breath and knowing she sounded flirty (and, for once, not really caring), she added, "And you always look handsome."

In a blur of movement, Will was on his feet and pinning her to the door. He pressed against her and whispered into her lips, "I'm so glad you think so." Tessa smiled as he kissed her. She forced him away gently and said, "Alright. Now I _really_ have to go."

Sighing theatrically, Will said, "If you must."

"I must."

"Till we meet again, my lady," Will murmured, kissing her hand. Tessa giggled and retrieved her hand from his grasp. Opening the door, she slid into the corridor. She turned to look at him and was rewarded by his violet-blue eyes gazing back at her. She smiled at him and turned.

"I love you, Tess."

Tessa halted. She turned back to him and looked him directly in the eyes. With conviction, she said, "I know, Will."

**A/N: *sits back and sighs contentedly* Well, I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. IT'S MY FIRST MULTI-CHAPTER STORY THAT I'VE FINISHED! I'm so proud :) I'll miss my Tessa/Will universe *sniff*, but I guess I'll just have to write more! **

**Till next time...**


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